Your Community Plan and HDC

Parish Plans:

1. What is a parish plan?
2. The 'Key Principles' of parish plans
3. Issues that may be addressed in a parish plan
4. What is Hart District Council's role?
5. Members' and Officers' roles?
6. What is the community's role?
7. Parish plans and the Local Development Framework (LDF)
8. Potential benefits of a parish plan
   • General
   • Planning
9. Guidance on Supplementary Planning Documents?
10. Bridging the gap - parish plans and the wider Local Strategic Partnerships and Community Strategies
11. What makes a good parish plan?
12. Who can I go to for support and guidance?
13. Which organisation may offer funding for community projects?
14. Glossary

1. What is a Parish Plan?
The Government's Rural White Paper 'Our countryside, the future' (2000) proposed that all rural communities should develop 'Town, Village and Parish Plans' to identify key facilities and services, to set out the problems that need to be tackled and to demonstrate how distinctive characters and features could be preserved.

Parish plans are produced by and for local communities. A parish plan is an opportunity for a community to work together to collect the representative views, opinions and ideas of all local people. From these, a consensus will need to be reached in areas of conflicting views and an action plan can be developed to lay out a shared vision for the future of the community over the next 5-10 years. There are many areas of interest and importance and it is up to the community to define the issues to be tackled by the parish plan. Each plan will be as individual as the parish it is undertaken by and can be produced by any size of parish or community. A parish plan should be presented in a way that is interesting, attractive and easy to understand, broadly in line with the published guidance from the Countryside Agency. (Title: 'Parish Plans - Guidance for town and parish councils')

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2. The Key Principles of Parish Plans are:

• Comprehensive, considering social, economic and environmental issues of concern to the community. (Examples of issues in Table A)
• Holistic and involve the whole community - everyone should have a chance to have their say and get involved in producing the plan.
• Based upon robust evidence and information provided by community participation, survey and research, supported by records of sources and processes.
• Focused on action, with clear statements of Who? What? Why? and How?
• Aimed to guide the community action to meet local needs, help them prioritise their resources and to provide important information to help influence the policies, decisions and actions of others.
• Owned by a community to deliver in partnership with others and not handed over for the action plan to be delivered by outside agencies.
• Expected to take on average between 12 - 14 months to complete.

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3. Table A: Examples of issues:

4. Hart District Council supports and encourages communities to produce parish plans that follow the key principles set out above. Support includes:

• The post of 'Urban Design and Community Planning Officer' has been created within Hart's Planning Services to provide:
  • Guidance, information and support on the development of emerging plans, and potential sources of funding available for community-based projects that may result
  • Co-ordination between groups to enable the sharing of information and techniques
• Access to / use of the Village Appraisals for Windows software and resource kit , produced by the University of Gloucestershire, with licence costs paid by Hart Council
• Enabling grants for parish plan groups towards the development of their plan, subject to approval
• Information, feedback meetings, website updates and access to maps and other data for approved project work.

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5. Parish plan groups and steering groups and the involvement of members and officers of the local District Council.
It is advised that no member or officer of the council should be a member of either a parish plan group or steering group in an official capacity. The role of members and officers of the council should be that of a guiding and advisory capacity whilst acting formally as a Hart officer or member, or in action as a member of the parish community in which they live i.e. responding to questionnaires, attending public meetings in their capacity as a private citizen. It is key that they do not exert a disproportionate influence on the progress and content of the Parish Plan.

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6. What is the community's role?
The issues that concern the community should be identified through a comprehensive and representative consultation process involving all sectors of the local community. The results of this will need to be structured and prioritised to inform an action plan detailing future realistic and achievable activities. A well-structured action plan could identify:

• Actions required and details of action to be taken
• Priority of action and timescale
• Who will be involved including partner organisations
• Lead responsibility for organising the action
• Resources / Funding required
• Additional comments or information

Outcomes of a parish plan action plan will depend on the initial issues identified by local people and the solutions proposed.

The process of producing a parish plan should give all local people the opportunity to participate and experience roles such as being part of or chairing a committee, undertaking research with local residents and developing working groups to take action on issues highlighted by the parish plan.

Projects resulting from a parish plan action plan may vary between small, low cost and easy to accomplish, to larger scale and more time and cost consuming.

When considering requests for funding to undertake projects, grant-giving bodies are likely to require evidence of community consultation, need and previous successful community action.

Community-led parish plans can and generally will be linked with Parish Councils, who should provide support for the plan and related projects. Practical support, contributions of funding and in-kind funding e.g. use of village hall or clerk's time may be available from the Parish Council.

Hart District Council acknowledges that a parish plan or equivalent document can be an effective way of communicating the views and needs of the community. They have the potential to inform council policies, decisions and actions as well as those of other public service providers.

In particular parish plans will be welcomed as an additional source of information about local character and needs for input into the Local Development Framework (LDF). Hart District Council's LDF is in the early stages of preparation and, through gradual implementation, will replace the current Local Plan which covers the period up to 2006.

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7. How do Parish Plans fit in with the LDF?
Parish Plans do not currently have any formal status, and they cannot override adopted planning policy. However, if produced in accordance with published guidance and in close consultation with Hart as the local planning authority, there should be elements of a Parish Plan which address 'planning matters' - those which have a 'land use, development and design' dimension. These can make an effective contribution to the planning process through policy development and application at a local level.

Parish Plans can help to inform policies and proposals in LDFs - Parish Plans should set out clear and representative community views and priorities on a number of land-use/development/design issues. For example, a Parish Plan may set out community priorities for new open space provision in the village, or preferred locations or design guidance for new affordable housing schemes. District Councils are required to take account of the views of local people and organisations when drafting statutory planning documents. The Parish Plan, or information gathered as part of its preparation, can therefore have a valuable role to play as part of the forthcoming LDF consultation process, and can help to shape the new LDF.

Parts of Parish Plans can add local detail to policies in the LDF, and can be integrated into Supplementary Planning Documents adopted under the LDF - certain parts of parish plans which relate to land use, development or design may provide useful support or detail to policies in the LDF. For example, the Parish plan may have a chapter on the design of local buildings, which could help to supplement generic design policies in the LDF. Integrating these parts of the parish plan into adoptable Supplementary Planning Documents will give them material weight in deciding planning applications for new development.

Parish plans should generally be positive in outlook and content and should conform to higher level planning guidance. It is important to note that, to be adopted by Hart either as area-based, or incorporated into topic or theme-based Supplementary Planning Documents, these parts of the Parish Plan will have to accord with the emerging LDF. Hart's LDF similarly must, in turn, conform to national and regional planning guidance. In addition to these requirements, there are a number of procedures (set by Government) that all Supplementary Planning Documents must follow to pass a formal test of 'soundness'. These particularly relate to comprehensive and representative consultation procedures and to sustainability appraisal.

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8. Potential benefits:

General
Below are listed three potential types of output from a parish. They will be helpful in clarifying the links that the results of community participation can make with the formal planning system, in addition to identifying resources that are vital to initiating projects in the community:

Locally based Action Plan. Actions that are realistic and can be undertaken within local resources.

Policy Influencing. Information taken from community consultation to inform the actions of others, not necessarily land-use planning-related.

Planning Influence. Evidence-based information, responses and proposals that can be incorporated within Supplementary Planning Documents that will be formally adopted by Hart as part of its Local Development Framework, and that are relevant to and capable of use by Planning Officers or Inspectors when informing planning decisions, both in policy and development control.

There may be many local issues that arise in a parish plan, not all of which will be directly relevant to Hart's land-use planning role. These may help to focus action from the local community itself, set the agenda for the parish or town council, or help to inform or enable actions by other services in Hart Council or public service promoters. Dual issues may cover:-

• Community Safety
• Housing
• Health
• Leisure and recreation
• Transportation
• Access to and maintenance of essential services
• Open space provision
• Town and village centre vitality and economic robustness
• The changing rural economy
• Quality of Life

It is important to see the parish plan primarily as a local vision, capitalising on and embracing the views, interests and knowledge of local people. Successful examples elsewhere have been seen as particularly valuable in providing the impetus for more and better community identity and engagement, resulting in long-term benefits.

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Planning
In addition to establishing a local agenda of important or distinctive issues, both Hart and local community representatives see tangible benefit in producing parish plans. The information in parish plans can be used to feed into or supplement Hart's new Local Development Framework (LDF), which will, as it emerges, replace the existing Local Plan. This should enable communities with local knowledge and concerns to directly inform planning decisions. It should also enhance a sense of local community and local distinctiveness by actively encouraging the involvement of more people in the process.

Hart intends to include policy within the Core Strategy of its LDF referring to its support for local community plans, based wherever possible on parish areas and backed by parish or town councils. Hart intends to adopt Supplementary Planning Documents (SPDs) to provide locally informed guidance for relevant planning issues. Hart anticipates that the sections of a parish plan, which address spatial planning matters and meet the criteria for SPD, will be utilised in and / or integrated into SPDs that will be produced by Hart for formal adoption. To achieve this status, a number of criteria must be met. Guidance can be found in section 10 of the ODPM's document Creating Local Development Frameworks - A Companion Guide to PPS12 with further advice on Community Involvement in Section 7. The published guidance contains a large number of acronyms - see the Glossary at the end for their meanings.

To be used as part of an SPD, the appropriate sections of the parish plan must be well focused and relate to and conform to Hart's Development Plan Documents and therefore to the broader land use planning system. The document may well be spatially based (i.e. incorporating social and economic issues as well as environmental), will usefully include a map showing key features and proposals, and may benefit from illustrations to supplement text.

Content of the land use planning components of the Parish Plan may include:

• detailed layout of uses in an area where the broad allocation of uses and a specific site or area boundary are proposed in a development plan document. This may be most valuable in providing locally informed guidance on prioritizing and locating what should go where and how development may be well-integrated.
• Detailed design guidance - This is seen as a critically important element in creating, enhancing or maintaining local distinctiveness and sense of place for new development and for identifying where intervention may be desirable.
• how planning powers may be applied most effectively and might include agreed priorities for intervention in or enhancement / improvement / mitigation of the local environment, access, economy, facilities and features.

The land use planning sections of the parish plan must result from robust, fully inclusive and representative community involvement and must incorporate evidence of this. It will not be sufficient for it to be an end product of a limited number of well-intentioned, concerned and well-informed individuals or organizations. However, these are likely to be key to driving the project and preparing much of the draft content prior to engaging the wider community.

Whilst the backing of a parish or town council or its equivalent is seen as essential to embarking upon a parish plan, preparation of the plan should be carried out by steering and working groups from the wider community.

To reduce the risks of abortive work or disappointment and loss of impetus, Hart should be kept fully informed of preparative progress and will seek to comment at key stages.

It is very unlikely that the land use planning aspects of a parish plan will be appropriate to supplement SPD if they take a negative stance to change that may be required to meet national, regional or district objectives. It should aim to inform and advise on how such objectives can be achieved in the most beneficial or least harmful ways. It should be realistic in its expectations and comprehensive in its scope, whilst paying attention to local opportunities, aspirations and concerns. It will help both process and product if there is a clear vision of what the local community wishes to achieve.

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9. Guidance on Supplementary Planning Documents
The sections of a parish plan that address planning matters need to be treated like SPD. By doing this the relevant sections of information from the plan can be integrated into a formal SPD document that can be produced by Hart for formal consultation and subsequent adoption. The most up to date and relevant government guidance is:

• PPS 12: Local Development Frameworks.
• Creating Local Development Frameworks. A Companion guide to PPS12.

Planning Policy Statement 12: The following principles apply to a Supplementary Planning Document:

• it must be consistent with national and regional planning policies as well as the policies set out in the development plan documents contained in the local development framework;
• it must be clearly cross-referenced to the relevant development plan document policy which it supplements (or, before a relevant development plan document has been adopted, a saved policy from the Local or Structure Plan);
• it must be reviewed on a regular basis alongside reviews of the development plan document policies to which it relates; and
• the process by which it has been prepared must be made clear, including a published audit of the community involvement and other relevant processes that have contributed to it.

Sustainability appraisal will be required for SPD. However, this will be influenced by the degree to which the linked development plan document or saved policies have undergone sustainability appraisal and the nature of the document itself. The land use planning aspects of a parish plan will need to show that the proposals or policies meet the test of sustainability. This has been defined as "Improving the quality of life for all without damaging the environment or the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". There will therefore need to be consideration of such matters as infrastructure, energy costs, accessibility issues, use of materials and environmental and visual impacts.

12. For support and any additional information contact the Urban Design and Community Planning Officer Davina Bowe on 01252 774489 or by e mail at davina.bowe@hart.gov.uk

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14. Glossary:

(This covers items within the adjoining text. A complete glossary can be found in Creating Local Development Frameworks. A Companion guide to PPS12)

Core strategy: set out the long-term spatial vision for the local planning authority area, the spatial objectives and strategic policies to deliver that vision. The Core Strategy will have the status of a Development Plan Document.

Development plan documents: spatial planning documents that are subject to independent examination, and together with the relevant Regional Spatial Strategy, will form the development plan for a local authority area for the purposes of the Act. They can include a Core Strategy, Site Specific Allocations of land, and Area Action Plans (where needed). Other Development Plan Documents, including generic Development Control Policies, can be produced. They will all be shown geographically on an adopted proposal map. Individual Development Plan Documents or parts of a document can be reviewed independently from other Development Plan Documents. Each authority must set out the programme for preparing its Development Plan Documents in the Local Development Scheme.

Generic development control policies: these will be a suite of criteria-based policies which are required to ensure that all development within the areas meets the spatial vision and spatial objectives set out in the Core Strategy. They may be included in any Development Plan Document or may form a standalone document.

Local development framework: the name for the portfolio of Local Development Documents. It consists of Development Plan Documents, Supplementary Planning Documents, a Statement of Community Involvement, the Local Development Scheme and Annual Monitoring Reports. Together these documents will provide the framework for delivering the spatial planning strategy for a local authority area and may also include local development orders and simplified planning zones.

Supplementary plan documents: provide supplementary information in respect of the policies in Development Plan Documents. They do not form part of the Development Plan and are not subject to independent examination.

Sustainability appraisal: tool for appraising policies to ensure they reflect sustainable development objectives (i.e. social, environmental and economic factors) and required in the Act to be undertaken for all local development documents.

June 06 Hart District Council

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